5 basics of effective learning

​Learning is an inevitable activity which starts right from birth. Active or passive we are always absorbing information and learning from our environment. Learning maintains an ever rising curve and happens throughout our lives.

We learn new things from people, places, experiences. Anything and everything we come in contact with, leaves an impression on our minds. The ideas or concepts we learn are sometimes pleasing sometimes confusing and sometimes very important and useful.

To keep up with the pace of the modern world it has become absolute necessary to learn and retain information is at a rapid pace. The human brain is processing exponential information like never before. Pick any activity to learn cook, to learn to drive, to learn to play music, to learn to make friends every time the mind is looking for effortless and successful ways of learning. Knowledge is the key to a successful happy life and learning is the door to the ocean of knowledge.

Below are outlined the 5 basics of effective and easy learnings.

1. Ensure happiness through out the learning period.

For a mind to learn and retain new concepts happiness is the key ingredient. Do not stress to learn or understand a particular concept. Remember if you are unhappy, or at discomfort or just in low spirits, then there is no productive learning taking place. Understand that the concept or subject is not being well received by the mind. learning a concept on an unhappy stressed mind is like trashing it. Teachers and mentors must always be mindful of happiness in their sessions and be creative and tactful wherever needed to ensure a successful transfer of knowledge.

2. Plan breaks or intervals:

Allocating sufficient time for breaks and intervals is vital for effective learning, breaks and time offs helps to successfully grasp and retain the new concept. Not only plan only plan for learning time, and steps and procedures but also space time for post learning relaxation time. Relaxation time helps to detox the mind and remove the unwanted information collected in the learning session. It refreshes the minds. Gives time for the new concept to retain in mind. Breaks help in building motivation to learn more.

3. Repeat the same concept over and over again:

Irrespective of the discipline be it sports, music, or academic repetition is unavoidable. Reading the same text, playing the same cord or practising a brush stroke over several days have immense advantages. It helps to build and lay down the foundation in the mind to learn the new discipline. It also helps strengthening the memory patterns and shifting the concept from short term memory to long term memory. Emphasising a concept for hours in a day and not revisiting again next day will, just go down the drain.

4. Recall or ask questions:

To understand and evaluate how far a concept is understood it is very important to allocate time for recall in the learning session. Active recall by asking questions helps to engage the mind in newly learnt concept and leave impressions on the mind. It helps to sustain the learning for a longer period of time. Recall helps to identify parts of the discipline which were are not understood in the recent learning session.

5. Eliminate procrastination:

Learning new concepts and discipline mostly activates pain and discomfort in the mind as it seems an unfamiliar task for the mind to perform. Most people procrastinate or give excuses to learn something absolute new or that seem alien to them.

Pain or discomfort generated by learning a new unfamiliar concept can be eliminated by convincing the mind that boring task is only going to last for a pre decided time or couple of minutes. And they are required to give their best only for these couple of minutes. For the limited time just focus on the steps involved in doing that task rather than focusing on the output. The output could be defined as a particular music note, the standard of handwriting, reading number of pages of a text book.

Focusing on the steps involved in doing the boring task rather than the output is hyper productive. Engage the mind to work on the unpleasant task for a couple of minutes to establish comfortability with the difficult task. Gradually the pre decided times can be increased and slowly you can work your way to the output.

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2 thoughts on “5 basics of effective learning”

You really make it appear so easy along with your presentation but I in finding this matter to be really something which I think I would never understand. It kind of feels too complex and very broad for me. I am looking ahead on your subsequent publish, I’ll try to get the hold of it!